


Positive and Negative Spaces

by LuckyDiceKirby



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 00:00:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1166182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyDiceKirby/pseuds/LuckyDiceKirby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Luteces, from beginning to beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Positive and Negative Spaces

Prior to your contact with Robert, your life is not awful. It is simply always lacking something, a something which you cannot quite find it in yourself to name. Perhaps that is truly the catalyst for your interest in the mysteries of the physical world: a need to quantify and name the empty space that is constantly present in your life, in the very fiber of your being.

When you are seventeen years old you read _Frankenstein_ and find yourself fascinated. Not just by the theoretical scientific possibilities that it posits, but also by the fact of its authorship. You think it likely that Mary Shelley’s contemporaries scoffed at the idea of a young woman writing such things, and yet she did it anyway, first anonymously and then not. You are, in turns, impressed and inspired, and whenever your mother tells you how unladylike your inquiries into the sciences are, you think of her.

You think that perhaps in a few years, your name too shall grace the title page of a book, one that will survive beyond your own death. You do not tell your mother of these ambitions, of course—there is no point. She would only scoff. But you know that it can be done.

And so, when a man named Comstock asks you to help him build a city in the sky, offers you everything that you could possibly need, you do not scoff. You hardly even pause to think before you accept, because you don’t believe in fate or destiny. You believe in taking the opportunities that come and creating the future you desire, because you know it can be done.

Perhaps, in some other world, you were not so inspired. Perhaps in another world you hesitated, and scrutinized Comstock’s motives further. Perhaps there are an infinite number of universes in which you never agree to help Columbia come into being, just as there are an infinite number of universes in which you do.

Perhaps those other worlds are much better off than your own; but in those other worlds you might never have had the opportunity to know Robert. Selfishness is a trait you never deny possessing, and as it is, you are happy with your choices, such as they are. 

Discovering Robert’s existence is not terribly surprising or exciting, when it happens; once it becomes clear to you that there are a multitude of worlds, the fact that there must also be a multitude of _you_ is the logical corollary.

Communicating with Robert, on the other hand, is like nothing else you’ve experienced. It is transcendent, all-consuming: you think of nothing else for days, even when you are not tapping out endless messages in Morse through a single particle. It is proof that you do not have to be as you always have been; it is proof that you do not always have to be alone; it is proof that there is someone out there in the vast dark who can truly know you as you are.

Theory: it is very much what you imagine it must be like to fall in love.

Your first true meeting with Robert, the first in which you both coexist in the same place, instead of simply peering through windows or whispering through walls, is not ideal. He is disoriented, and then he is bleeding, and then he stumbles and is prone on the floor. You knew—both of you knew—that this was a possibility, that the relocation of a being into another reality might not be a smooth, or a healthy, transition. But it is a very different thing to hypothesize about such an outcome, and to be confronted with a man who both is and is not yourself out cold and hemorrhaging on the floor. 

It is extremely upsetting, you find, and not only because it is quite a task to pull Robert’s larger frame up from the floor and to deposit him onto the bed. His face, pale and blood-spattered, is worrisome. You do not enjoy worrying, and yet, here you are. 

He does heal, soon enough, urged on by music from the gramophone and blood from your veins. The transfusion of your blood brings up interesting questions, on a scientific level—if you have given him your blood, is he now more you than he was before? 

You ask him, when he wakes up clear-eyed instead of bleary and uncomprehending, and the various memories bouncing about in his head seem to have sorted themselves out. 

“Does it matter?” he asks in response. You are only just now beginning to realize that this is a habit of his—responding to question not with answers, but with more questions. You would find it more annoying if it were not a practice you often indulge in yourself. “We are, after all, much the same. Almost all the same, really. Separated by only a single chromosome.”

“And yet,” you say, “there may be more differences between us than are readily apparent. Nature versus nurture.”

“Ah, yes. Accounting for differences in our environment--”

“—as well as differences in our DNA, yes.” These are large questions, which merit further study—but perhaps not now, as Robert has only just now recovered. “Go back to sleep, brother. I can assure you that after your past week of illness, you dearly need it.”

“I was just about to say the same of you,” he says. “You look as if you have hardly slept a moment in all of that time.”

“Well,” you point out, “a certain invalid seems to have taken up residence in my bed, which does make the exercise of sleeping somewhat difficult.”

“To be fair,” Robert says, “it is, in a sense, my bed as well.”

“I suppose it is. I do hope you are not opposed to sharing, as I think you may have been right in your assessment of my need for rest.”

“Does it count as sharing, really? Sharing with oneself?” Robert asks, but he obligingly moves over, creating space for her under the blanket.

“Ask me in the morning,” you say. “I suspect I will probably care more then.” 

In the morning, of course, you are sensible to the fact that there are more important considerations to be made, although of course philosophical questions of identity are endlessly interesting, especially to one in your situation. But there are more immediate concerns—identifying the best way to integrate Robert into life in Columbia, for example.

You suppose a twin brother you’ve never felt the need to mention won’t be terribly surprising. You are known to be a fairly private person, after all.

As you make these arrangements, and others, it never does occur to you that sharing a bed ought not be considered a permanent solution. Presumably, the thought never occurs to Robert, either; he never brings it up. In complete honestly, you enjoy your current sleeping arrangements. Sleeping beside Robert is like everything with Robert always is, but magnified: it is the elimination of negative space from your life. 

And after all, there still is the question of whether sharing with oneself can really be considered sharing at all.

-

Working with Comstock is trying, although Robert seems to adapt to the practice easily enough. It makes you wonder about him, which is not an uncommon occurrence—he often occupies your thoughts these days, just as he did before he came to Columbia in the flesh. That is what you wonder about, though—the fact of Robert’s coming here. What, precisely, did he give up, in leaving his own world? You do not often discuss his past, except when contrasting it with yours. He knows all of your history, as it became his own when he came here, and yet you know almost nothing of his.

“A conspicuous oversight, don’t you think?” you ask him one day, as you are both working in your lab. 

“Believe me, Rosalind, my position of remembering two histories at once is not an enviable one.”

“And I do not envy you it. However, it is possible for one to know something of another’s past in a less extreme manner than the way in which you know of my past.”

The corner of Robert’s mouth lifts. “Are you asking me to tell you about myself, Rosalind? Or yourself, as it were.”

You roll your eyes—a luxury you allow yourself only when alone or with only Robert, which are of course fairly similar situations. “I merely wish to know, brother, the true depth of the debt of gratitude I owe you for abandoning your life, wholesale, in order to join me in mine.”

He shrugs. “Nothing terribly exciting, I assure you.”

“No city in the sky?”

“None at all, for lack of a charismatic zealot--”

“—or a penniless physicist desperate enough to attempt the thing.”

“Yes, the two key ingredient of any floating city were tragically missing from my home universe. So you see, it really is for the best that I joined you.”

“It can’t have been all dull,” you point out. “You did find it within yourself to create the Lutece Field on your end as well.”

“Yes, but exciting discoveries in physics can be done in any world. There was no need for me to leave that aspect of my life behind. In fact,” he says, gesturing towards the laboratory and machinery that has sprung up and overtaken the house around you, “I dare say coming here has only increased my opportunities in that area.”

You feel rather warm. Or perhaps simply—pleased. You are very pleased, to think that Robert does not regret coming to your world in order to be with you, to think that in his mind, he has not even lost anything in doing so.

“And besides,” Robert says, “teaching was getting rather boring anyway.”

You smile. “I wouldn’t know,” you say. “Nobody ever wanted me for a professor.”

“At a great loss to themselves.”

“As your students would attest, no doubt.”

He laughs at this jab at his own vanity, and so do you. The both of you are, after all, far past ignoring your own vanity. Your favorite companion in all the world is him, and his favorite companion in all the world is you, and the both of you are each other. The moral questions posed by such narcissism are almost as thorny as those pertaining to grammar, but you find the latter much more interesting. 

-

The business with the girl is unfortunate.

At its inception, you are happier than you have ever been in your life, and so you think perhaps you can be forgiven for not having given the matter the scrutiny it deserves.

It seems, at its base, a logical plan: Comstock believes, either due to some delusion or to something he has seen through one of your tears, or some unholy combination of both, than an heir of his own blood is necessary for the continuation of Columbia. And yet, your contraption has made him sterile. Therefore, in order to obtain a proper heir, he will have to find one in another universe, a universe in which he is able to produce children, and has done so.

Picking Robert’s original world as the place to find the child is not difficult. In Robert’s world, there is no Columbia, and so it is clear that the Comstock who inhabits his world must have chosen a different path. _Finding_ Comstock in that world proves more difficult, until you and Robert are able to convince him to actually aid you in the endeavor. The man does like his secrets, and you suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise that “Comstock” is not his real name. 

It is particularly lucky that that universe’s Comstock, this Booker DeWitt, has indeed produced a child. You do wonder at that, but a happy coincidence does not destiny make. 

Robert is the one who does all the legwork in this endeavor, as unlike you, he suffers no ill effects from existing in the world that was once his home. He says that this Booker DeWitt, this alternate version of Comstock, is not a happy man. He is not a zealot, he commands no followers: he is simply a man, full of regret, steadily drinking his way to an early grave. 

It is not hard to convince yourself that he would make a terrible father, especially after he agrees to sell his only child in order to pay off his debts. Comstock, at the very least, has more resources at his command for the raising of a child. 

It is true that you may have misjudged him slightly, as he does try to retrieve his daughter, in the end, but to be honest, at that moment you have greater worries on your mind—the portal is unstable, and you can feel your eyes widen and palms begin to sweat at the thought that Robert might not make it back through.

You know it is an irrational fear. Even if this portal were to close, you could always make another one—it is not as if you are at a loss for the technology. There is no true danger. Annoyingly enough, however, you are not always at your most rational when it comes to Robert.

Wrapped up in your worries and thoughts of Robert, you do not spare much thought for the fate of the girl, once she and Comstock and Robert are safely within your own universe once again. You help to study and observe her, once it becomes clear that she is a subject worth studying and observing, but you do not worry overmuch about the Lamb of Columbia, the Seed of the Prophet.

It is a peculiar kind of self-centeredness which allows you to know your own thoughts and not notice those of Robert, but it is years spent working at his side before you realize that in the business with the girl, he feels a great deal more guilt than you do.

It is not that you do not recognize that what you have done is not, perhaps, the most moral choice you could have made. You have ripped a girl from her own universe, not of her own will, as you did with Robert, but at the whims of a prophet ever more caught up in his own delusions of grandeur. You have been complicit in her seclusion to a tower, guarded by a monstrosity, and yet knowing no other creature for a friend. You have no way of knowing what her life would have been like in her own universe, but for better or for worse the girl is here now, and there is no point in dwelling on the things you might have done to prevent it. Surely, in another universe, you did those things—you leave that for the other Rosalinds and other Roberts to deal with.

At least, you do this, until Robert delivers his ultimatum.

Although it is not a sentiment which you often express, the thought of being parted from your brother, now that you have been brought together, is quite painful to you—it is completely anathema, in fact. You would do anything in your power to avoid it, which you suppose Robert must know. Why else would he choose it as his weapon to use against you, in convincing you to help him in his mad idea of sending the girl back to whence she came?

Robert looked through a tear, and in it, he saw the world burning, the girl heading the attack, and he sees this future as unavoidable only if the girl remains in Columbia. You see it as it truly is: unavoidable in any circumstances. If it happens in one universe, then surely it will also happen in countless others, regardless of any intervention you or your brother might attempt.

And yet, Robert is adamant, and for the first time that you can immediately remember, he shouts at you, and you at him. It is an odd sort of self-flagellation, shouting at oneself. You rather despise it.

You would like to think that Robert knows that threatening to part company with you will be an effective method of persuasion because he feels similarly attached to you. But as much as you would like to believe that, there is no empirical proof that it is so—it is possible that, even after all these years at your side, his feelings for you do not match your own in intensity. Never before has such an idea occurred to you, for even during your fights, both mock and real, you knew, deep in your bones, that you and your brother belonged together, that even if you could not stand his company, or he yours, you could both stand even less the prospect of being apart.

You do not believe in fate, but you do believe in scientific fact, and it is clear to you, even if it is not to him, that the both of you truly are inseparable, on a base level: he is the positive that fills in your negative spaces, and you fulfill the same function for him.

It is hard to accept that you may not know Robert as well as you thought. You knew he had more sympathy for the plight of the girl—for the plight of _anyone_ , really—than you, and for all your scoffing, you loved him for it. But you did not realize his caring would blind him to the harsh realities of the world, to the fact that some calamities could not be undone, that disaster could not always—could perhaps not ever—be truly prevented. 

That night, after you and Robert both have exhausted yourselves in your shouting, you do not retire to your shared bed. Instead, you while away your time in the laboratory, at first attending to a few actual experiments, and then simply pacing, restlessly. 

Eventually, after hours of this, Robert joins you.

“Rosalind,” he says, from the door. You continue your pacing and do not answer. He approaches you, not cautiously, as men have often done, rightly thinking that you are dangerous. Robert has never seen you as dangerous—or at least, not dangerous to him. 

You halt your pacing so as not to run straight into him, but Robert takes another step closer, forcing you to crane your neck to look up at him.

“Yes, Robert?” you ask, cold and clipped. You do not call him ‘brother’. 

Robert does not answer. Instead, he reaches up behind your head to pull out the pins keeping your hair in place, so that it cascades down your shoulders. This done, he rests one hand on the back of your neck, the other on your waist, and pulls you into an embrace.

It is always so interesting, when your counterpart manages to surprise you, you think, resting your cheek against the crook of his neck.

Robert rests the tip of his chin on the top of your head, and says, “I don’t want to leave you, you know.”

“Do I?” Your words are muffled slightly against his neck, but you make no attempt to move. You are happy here, comfortable and comforted.

“You should. I enjoy your company as much as you enjoy mine. I simply enjoy a guilty conscience much less. We cannot let things stand as they are, Rosalind.”

“You cannot.”

“And if I cannot, then neither can you.”

There’s no point in arguing; he’s right. 

Every aspect of your relationship with Robert has always been easy, at least in the sense that even when you are not in agreement, both of you are always in perfect understanding. And so it is not so dramatic as it might be, when you raise your chin from Robert’s neck, and Robert leans his own down to meet you halfway in a kiss. 

You have always known, despite admonitions from Mother and from almost every single other person on this earth, that you will never marry. You have always known you would never marry, and you are beginning to realize the fullest extent of why. You and Robert are a pair, a matched set, inseparable, if only by the force of your own will. Perhaps, had it been truly necessary, you could have found another man whom you could tolerate in marriage. Perhaps you might even have been content. Perhaps through one of your tears, there is another you who is. But in pursuing this future, you have established your own fate, and this fate you have established is one in which you are able to be truly happy, because in this world you have Robert. In this world, you have eliminated the negative space from your life, have eliminated the need for resigning yourself to anything ordinary. Who has need of the ordinary when you can have something brilliant?

Robert is just as brilliant as you. You love him as well as you love your own self, because how could you not? 

That, in the end, is why you agree to his plan: because you love him, and can therefore do nothing else. It is an annoyingly pedestrian motivation, but it is the truth of the matter.

You break from the kiss, although you don’t go far, remaining close enough to Robert that the two of you are sharing breath, pressed nose to nose. For all your anger at being forced to go along with Robert’s plan, you are happy, in this moment—every moment you share with Robert is a happy one, at least in part. 

“Fine,” you say. “I still think this plan is foolish and doomed to failure, but I will help you.”

Robert restrains himself from smiling to broadly, and presses his lips to your forehead in thanks.

“You’re welcome,” you say, with a sigh.

-

As both a physicist and pessimist, you do not put much stock in the idea of an afterlife. And yet, here you are: clearly dead, and yet just as clearly not.

You have not admonished Robert for getting the both of you killed. It seems rather cruel, at this point. And after all, this outcome has not been entirely unpleasant—being dead seems to have had less ill effects than you might have expected, and Robert is still at your side. All things considered, you are not, truly, all that upset. 

It is a strange feeling, this business of being both dead and not. “Almost as if we have been set adrift at sea,” you say to Robert, as you both look down at your graves. The funeral ended a few hours ago, and yet here you both stand, for lack of any better place to go. You can, of course, go anywhere now, but there is still that instinct to remain tethered to your own time and your own world that is hard for you to shake. Harder for you, perhaps, than for Robert, who has already abandoned his own world once.

“Like Aeneas,” Robert agrees. “‘Fato profugus’, and all that.”

“I hardly think fate has anything to do with it, brother.”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t.”

“Hmm. Well, then how about this: ‘multum ille et terris iactatus et alto/ vi superum saevae memoren Iunonis ob iram’? I do feel quite thrown about at the moment. Why, I’ve even been thrown into a grave.”

You are annoyed, both by Robert’s mythic flights of fancy, and by the fact that he can quote Vergil from memory, and recite it in perfect meter, skills which you lack. You always did prefer _Frankenstein_ to the _Aeneid_ , when it came down to it. “A fair enough comparison, but again, I protest the involvement of any divine power.”

“And who do you think ordered our death?”

“Not the fates, and certainly not Juno, divine anger or no.” You contemplate sitting down. The earth is rather damp, but you’re not sure it matters anymore whether you dirty your clothes. “Surely, brother, you are not suggesting anything about Comstock is truly godly.”

He sighs. “Of course not,” he says. “I was merely trying to impart a bit more gravitas to our untimely end.”

“Was it really an end, though?” You decide it best to remain standing. You don’t plan to spend all night staring at your own and Robert’s graves, after all. It is depressing, and even worse, pointless.

“I suppose it does not quite feel like one.”

“It lacks a little something.”

“Finality, perhaps?”

“Precisely. Shall we go, brother?”

He offers you his arm, and a moment later, you are both gone.

-

You had—foolishly, perhaps—let yourself hope that in death, Robert would let go of his notions of rescuing the girl and the world.

You are growing rather tired of being proven wrong. His notions, it seems, have only grown more complicated.

“It’s very simple, you see,” he says, sitting on the steps of the lighthouse while you pace in front of him. “We need do nothing but assist. DeWitt will do the rest.”

“Will he, now?”

“Perhaps it would be better if you thought of it as an experiment.”

“What sort of mad experiment is this, brother? One which might have the effect of ending our own lives if it succeeds?”

“Our lives have already ended, by any conventional measure.”

“And yet, here we sit, arguing still.”

“Are you suggesting one’s ability to argue ought to be used as a indicator of life or death?”

You sigh heavily through your nose, and resist the urge to throw your counterpart into the water. You don’t know how to swim, and although it is possible that Robert does, you wouldn’t want to risk it. “I’m not in the mood to argue semantics with you, brother.”

Robert crosses his arms, kicks out his legs, and leans back against the step behind him. “A shocking development,” he says, still playful.

You give up on your pacing and sit down beside him, legs crossed. You nudge at his shoulder with your own until he puts his arm around you, and you lean into it, closing your eyes. For a moment, you simply enjoy the pleasure of sitting by the sea, both alone and with someone that you love.

The moment passes, and you ask, “Where do you think we should start?”

Robert squeezes you about the shoulders once, and then stands. “At the beginning,” he says, and you do.

One hundred and twenty three times, you go along with Robert’s mad plan, because when it comes to Robert you have never been able to listen to your better judgment. 

And on the one hundred and twenty third iteration of Robert’s mad plan, because when it comes to Robert you have never been able to resist doing the impossible, you succeed. Robert is right—in the end, you don’t really have to do anything. All you have to do is step back and let the girl take care of things, which she seems happy enough to do.

You, for your part, are happy to stand back and watch, Robert at your side.

There is, has always been, and always will be a lighthouse, just as there is, has always been, and always will be a man, and a city, and all the things that come after that. It is, however, no longer any concern of yours; even Robert cannot deny that any longer.

There is a lighthouse, and a door. You and Robert step through it, arm in arm, doing it as you do all things: together.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a huge Lutece problem and I'm not sorry. Also, I apologize for the gratuitous use of Vergil. I really just can’t help myself sometimes. Just be happy I convinced myself to get rid of the gratuitous Durkheim, that was really awful.


End file.
